


Find a Reason Not to Leave

by chanyeolk



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: M/M, lymphoma, this is a cancer fic be warned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-20
Updated: 2016-03-20
Packaged: 2018-05-27 20:41:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6299650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chanyeolk/pseuds/chanyeolk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Baekhyun isn’t sure what he was expecting when he decided to become an oncologist.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Find a Reason Not to Leave

**Author's Note:**

> First off, I'm not a doctor.  
> Second, I'm just going to apologize now- I'm so sorry.
> 
> (I definitely didn't edit this very well, probably.)

_Spring_

Baekhyun isn’t sure what he was expecting when he decided to become an oncologist. He was obsessed with superheroes as a child, and maybe he thought during medical school that this was as close as he’d get to becoming one, but as he sits in his office nursing his third cup of coffee in the last hour because he hasn’t slept in at least thirty-six, he regrets many of those choices. He’s so, _so_ tired. Coffee can do wonders for waking up your body, but it doesn’t do much to liven up emotional exhaustion. It’s hard not to feel that exhaustion as someone who literally has to watch people slowly die before their eyes.

In all honesty, he has had more patients that have survived than died, but the ones that really stick in his mind are the patients he has lost. What little time he has to sleep is normally spent lying awake and wondering what he could have changed in their treatment to save them. Baekhyun doesn’t like to say that he feels guilty that they died, but he will admit that he feels responsible they were never cured.

There’s probably a third left in his mug of black coffee when he gets up from his desk with a quiet grunt and decides to make his rounds. One of the nurses, Sehun, makes a beeline for Baekhyun with a folder in hand. “You have a new patient, Dr. Byun,” he says, handing over the manila folder with the name _Park Chanyeol_ written on it in barely legible lettering. Baekhyun opens it, reads the word _Hodgkin’s_ and immediately closes the folder with a sigh. “It doesn’t look good. He arrived in the emergency room after collapsing in class and then underwent a CT scan, only to be sent to us. I can’t believe it spread the way it did before symptoms started to show up.”

“Yeah, okay, Sehun,” Baekhyun starts, and Sehun gets the message to stop talking about it.

“He’s in room 207.”

Baekhyun continues on his own, mumbling something along the lines of _It’s cases like this when we might as well just put them out of their misery_ as he heads to the room. He knocks on the door twice, but when he opens it, no one is in there. “Where is he?” He asks, turning around to look out in the hallway. Upon turning to have his back to the door, he comes face to face to a man much taller than him with eyes wide and terrified. Baekhyun feels like an asshole having said what he did out loud.

“Chanyeol-sshi?” He asks, looking at the folder now to avoid the taller man’s gaze.

Chanyeol gives him a stiff nod. “That would be me,” he chokes out. “I needed to go to the bathroom.”

With a tightlipped smile, Baekhyun gestures for Chanyeol to follow him into the room and closes the door behind them. Chanyeol sits on the edge of the bed, feet crossed at the ankles and hands trapped between his thighs. His eyes are wide and scared; nothing Baekhyun isn’t used to. However, one look and Baekhyun can tell that Chanyeol is the last person to deserve such a severe and aggressive disease.

Baekhyun lets out a sigh, “Have any of the nurses explained the situation?”

Chanyeol shakes his head and stares at the floor.

“You must be scared, right?” Baekhyun asks. He tries his best to sympathize, putting on his most patronizing voice and even offering a small smile. “It must be terrifying to one second be enjoying class and then the next being in an ambulance.”

“Yeah,” Chanyeol answers with a horribly anxious chuckle. It all sounds so familiar. The boy makes himself very small on the bed for someone so tall, pulling his sleeves up over his hands and twisting at the fabric over and over again. “Then I was getting scanned, and now I’m in the cancer ward wondering what the hell happened to me.”

Baekhyun frowns. “Can I ask you a few questions?”

He gets a nod.

“Have you been experiencing any dizziness, exhaustion, or loss of appetite within the last few months?”

“I mean, I’m a student so I’m kind of always tired,” he says. Baekhyun understands. He really does. “Not so much the dizziness part, except for when I passed out the other day. As for appetite, I eat the same as I always have, really.”

Baekhyun tries his hardest to ignore the way that his patient’s voice wavers. “What about weight loss?”

There’s a sarcastic laugh, “Look at me. I’m like ninety pounds soaking wet. If I lost weight, it hasn’t been enough for me to notice.”

Offering up a smile doesn’t come easy after that, even though Baekhyun knows that Chanyeol is trying to ease his nerves with humor. “Okay, one last question then, I guess. Any trouble breathing, chest pains, or a cough?”

“I do tend to get light headed easily, but you know what they say about tall people. The air is just… thinner up here,” he tapers off, realizing that his jokes aren’t helping his case.

Baekhyun writes down things he thinks might be important so he can type them into Chanyeol’s file later, and then closes the folder. He looks Chanyeol in the eye and can see the way he visibly gulps. This is the worst part, it always is. He never likes to be the one to tell patients what is wrong, but here he is, sitting with a man who could very likely die within the year and he doesn’t even know it yet.

Standing up, Baekhyun takes the images from Chanyeol’s scan out of the folder and sticks them to the lights on the wall with metal clips. Using the dry erase pen sitting on top, he circles five areas. Some are much larger than others, and though Chanyeol doesn’t entirely know what’s happening, he looks very uneasy.

“These are the spots that the cancer cells have spread to,” he starts off with.

Chanyeol immediately interrupts, “So I really do have cancer?”

Baekhyun almost rolls his eyes, “I hate to break it to you, but you wouldn’t be here if you didn’t.”

He continues, pointing with the pen to an area around his neck, “Based on the severity of cancer cells around your lymph nodes here, this is probably where it originated, but if you’ll look, it has actually spread to the nodes around your underarms and under your diaphragm, as well as your spleen.”

Chanyeol’s jaw hangs open, staring at the images. It’s obvious that he wishes this were some sort of mistake, like his file got mixed up with someone else or something; anything but him having these cancer cells. “So what does this mean?”

“For now, until we can run a few more tests, were categorizing it as stage three Hodgkin’s lymphoma.”

He looks like he is going to be sick at any moment, face drained of color. “Three? That’s really bad, right?” His voice is panicked. “Am I going to die? Am I going to- Oh my god.”

Chanyeol is visibly shaking, pulling at and twisting the fabric of his hoody’s sleeves with such an intensity that his anxiety rubs off on Baekhyun a bit. He finds himself placing a reassuring hand on the boy’s shoulder, carefully as if he might break. Chanyeol’s eyes meet his and they look impossibly desperate, like he’s searching for answers in Baekhyun’s eyes. Baekhyun has to look away, afraid of accidentally giving him those answers.

“You’re not going to die,” Baekhyun finds himself artificially promising, despite knowing that Chanyeol overheard his mumbling in the hallway earlier. “I’m going to do everything in my power to keep that from happening, okay?”

He removes his hand and Chanyeol nods, looking at least a fraction more relieved. It is not admitted that after a few more tests, it could be discovered that he actually has stage IV.

Chanyeol leaves room 207 with instructions to talk to his family, try his hardest to continue his life as it is for now, and come back for weekly checkups. He’s still shaking as he goes, accidentally crumpling the information packets that Baekhyun is required to give all of his patients.

When he leaves the room as well, Sehun approaches with caution, seeming to notice the way Baekhyun’s knuckles have gone white around the folder in his hands. “He’s not crying, at least?” Sehun offers.

Baekhyun sighs. There’s a horrible feeling in his gut like he’s been in this exact same place before as he watches the oncology ward doors swing open and the lanky boy shuffle through them, not much purpose left in his step. He definitely _has_ been here before, and when he looks at Sehun with noticeable sadness and worry in his eyes, Sehun can tell right off the bat that it’s not the time for half-assed jokes.

“It feels like Kyungsoo all over again,” Baekhyun admits before he decides to head back to his own office for a bit. Maybe he can get a few moments of rest before seeing his next patient.

Sehun watches him walk away with something between terror and extreme concern laced through his features.

* * *

_Summer_

Chanyeol’s condition neither worsens nor gets better in the two months since he first came to Baekhyun. There are no more surprise collapses. Luckily, the cells seem to be spreading at a fairly slow rate. School ends for him, and he comes to his first appointment at the beginning of summer with the decision to start radiation. Baekhyun recommends it.

“Radiation is normally pretty successful in lymphoma cases,” Baekhyun says when Chanyeol brings it up for the first time since the original introduction of the topic three weeks ago. “I would recommend you do it.”

He’s sitting backwards on his chair, swiveling and turning in small half-circles while eating a sandwich Chanyeol brought for him. At some point the topic of Baekhyun’s non-existent meal and sleep schedule came up during his appointments. Ever since, he’s brought food to Baekhyun. It’s normally small stuff, a sandwich or a salad, but occasionally he will throw a few snacks in as well. Baekhyun is always grateful, but it makes him feel like he should be doing more to help Chanyeol’s condition. Chanyeol is telling him about the past week and how he’s not feeling too bad lately. It makes Baekhyun feel a bit hopeful.

They’ve learned a lot about each other in the past few weeks because of the appointments. Chanyeol was in school to become a sound engineer, getting his master’s. His family is in America and he doesn’t want to tell them because he doesn’t want them to come home yet, which Baekhyun thinks is stupid. He told him so, too. They’re also around similar ages, but Baekhyun does hold a few months on him. Baekhyun refuses to let him forget this.

“When should we start, do you think?” he asks about the radiation therapy.

Baekhyun looks at him and turns his head, pretending to think for a moment. “The sooner the better, really. I can help the receptionist set up your appointment with one of the therapists for some time before your next visit with me. You should probably start off with IVs once a week for now and we’ll see how that goes.”

“Wait,” Chanyeol starts. He looks distressed, to say the least. “You’re not the one who does it?”

Baekhyun shakes his head. “I diagnose and treat, but don’t really administer the actual treatments. Not radiation, at least.”

“Can you still come?”

“Probably not. I don’t have much time for outside things.”

“Can you make time?” Chanyeol looks at him expectantly.

Taking into consideration the fact that Chanyeol doesn’t have any family here and has never particularly mentioned any friends, Baekhyun really considers it. There’s a weird silence in the room as he does, and he’s not sure he’d be able to handle the disappointed look Chanyeol would give him if he said that really couldn’t do it. The smile he gets when he finally says _I can look at my schedule and try_ makes it all worth it, though.

Chanyeol and Baekhyun talk to the receptionist together, agreeing on two days from then to see Dr. Kim for his first dose of radiation therapy. Before leaving, Chanyeol says he has a few questions, and even though Sehun is telling him that his next patient has been waiting for fifteen minutes, Baekhyun agrees to answer them.

“Am I going to lose my hair?”

“We’re not targeting anything in your head, so it’s unlikely. It could happen, though.”

“What if I do?”

“Then… You’ll be hairless?” Baekhyun answers, trying not to laugh because Chanyeol seems genuinely perturbed.

Chanyeol’s voice drops into somewhat of a whisper, “What if I’m ugly without hair?”

Baekhyun has to laugh at this, for which he immediately apologizes. “It will be fine, Chanyeol. Just pray you don’t have a strangely shaped head or anything.”

With that, Baekhyun moves on to visit his next patient. He looks back one last time only to find Chanyeol looking absolutely mortified as he feels around his own scalp.

Two more patient consultations and then Baekhyun is finally able to retreat back to his office to have dinner and hopefully fall asleep on his couch. He goes straight to the latter, though, only falling half asleep before there’s a quick knock and then someone is barging into his office. It’s Sehun. _Of course_ it’s Sehun.

“What do you want,” Baekhyun grumbles, turning over to bury his face in the cool black leather of his couch. The last thing he wants to do right now is get scolded by some kid that’s barely twenty-two about things he hardly knows anything about.

“You and Doctor Kim Junmyeon hardly talk, and now you’re going to consult a patient alongside him?”

“Yeah, so?” Baekhyun asks, not understanding why this is relevant or important at the current time.

“You said yourself that this Park Chanyeol kid is going to be another Do Kyungsoo and yet here you are, completely willing to do the same thing all over again? Don’t go with him to that therapy session, Dr. Byun. You know what it does to patients.”

“I’m not going to get attached.”

Sehun acknowledges by now that Baekhyun is a lost cause. He sighs and starts heading for the door, stopping at the door frame. “That’s the problem, though. You kind of already are.”

Baekhyun just groans and flips over onto his back. He doesn’t want to think about this right now. Sleep comes quickly for once.

His dreams are more like memories, projected on the backs of his eyelids like old, black and white silent films. The audio is broken, but Baekhyun can still see Kyungsoo sitting there on the chair in the hospital room. He’s smiling even though Baekhyun is probably telling him that he has glioblastoma in its worst form. Then he’s watching as Kyungsoo grabbed his hand before having to get his third MRI; he never liked those machines. Suddenly there’s Kyungsoo with no hair, throwing up and genuinely looking sickly. Somehow he still managed to smile afterwards. His dream flashes forward to a hospitalized Kyungsoo, finally bedridden and greeting Baekhyun like a stranger because the cancer has finally starting eating his memories. Kyungsoo was even kind then, quickly knowing he was forgetting something when Baekhyun would look at him sadly and gently slide his fingers along Kyungsoo’s, even if it were just for a moment. Then there’s Kyungsoo forgetting his words and forgetting everything and losing control of his own limbs and crying as he looks at his Doctor Byun with these helpless eyes and then…

Baekhyun wakes up. He drags his hands down his face and rubs at his eyes, suddenly deciding coffee is preferable to sleep tonight. Despite his dreams of Kyungsoo, he can’t get Chanyeol off his mind.

Chanyeol’s appointment arrives fast. Baekhyun meets him in Junmyeon’s office, only showing up five minutes late. Doctor Kim looks incredibly confused after Baekhyun knocks twice and then enters, but when Chanyeol says _Thank God you’re here_ , he just shrugs it off.

Chanyeol winces when the IV needle is put in. Baekhyun is silently praying that Chanyeol doesn’t get acquainted with any of the common side effects. It only takes about ten minutes before he and Junmyeon are scrambling to get Chanyeol a bin to throw up in. He’s pale and at the angle Baekhyun is standing at, his cheeks have begun to look slightly sunken in and it makes him wonder when Chanyeol had started to lose weight. He takes note of this into Chanyeol’s file, but the handwriting is hardly legible. He’d be lying if he said the thought of Chanyeol getting worse wasn’t making his hands shake.

They walk out, and Baekhyun has to sling one of Chanyeol’s arms around his shoulders to support him as they walk back to their own room of 207. He takes one look around the lobby area and decides when he realizes no one is paying attention to just keep walking. It takes three tries for Baekhyun to open his office door with his foot, Chanyeol chuckling through his dizziness and nausea, and Baekhyun takes that into account when he not-so-gently lays him on his office couch. His feet hang off the end, which earns a grumbled _lanky bastard_.

“Can I call you Baekhyun instead of Dr. Byun?”

“That’s fine,” Baekhyun says in a very nonchalant manner.

Chanyeol laughs, probably half asleep by this point. “Baekhyun-ah~”

Ignoring him, Baekhyun moves his trash can close to the edge of the couch, just in case. “I’m gonna let you sleep and stuff,” he says as he moves to go check his schedule at the front desk, but Chanyeol catches his wrist with a very strong grip for someone who could hardly hold their own body up moments ago.

“Stay?” He asks. “Just for a little bit?”

The sad look in Chanyeol’s tired eyes keeps Baekhyun’s feet glued to the ground he stands on, so he sits instead. It doesn’t seem to matter that he can’t remember the last time the carpet was vacuumed or that he’s right next to a trash can, because Chanyeol falls asleep smiling and it makes Baekhyun feel like he’s really doing something right. Somewhere along the line, Chanyeol’s grip on his wrist turns into fingers clasped tightly between his own.

* * *

_Fall_

 In October, Chanyeol is hospitalized for the first time since his diagnosis. It’s almost crazy how quickly a person with cancer can deteriorate just from a cold. Also for the first time since his diagnosis, Chanyeol looked genuinely sickly. It was the kind of sickly that’s hard to look at because you can’t help but think _they’re dying. They’re going to die soon._

Baekhyun nearly lost it in his office the same day Chanyeol was brought in an ambulance because his landlord found him collapsed in the shower, water all but frigid and still running. The shower curtain had been pulled down with him and he was tangled in it, the landlord said when paramedics showed up. He had turned off the water and found towels to wrap him in, despite Chanyeol’s weak protests to leave him alone because he would be _fine._ His lips were still purple when he got to the hospital.

It took hours, though. _Hours_ of Baekhyun trying to get a hold of him and the receptionist trying to get a hold of him; even Sehun tried calling. He never answered his phone, though. It was the first and only time Chanyeol had missed an appointment with Baekhyun, so of course he’d worry. After five minutes he had the receptionist call. After fifteen, he called himself. When an hour passed, he called again. Three hours passed and he looked up Chanyeol’s address in his records and called his apartment complex’s office.

The landlord had given him hell, telling him that he couldn’t just go and see if someone was home.

Finally, Baekhyun had only gotten through to him with, “I don’t think you fucking understand. This is his doctor. He has stage III cancer and could possibly be having a medical emergency. You need to go see if he is home and okay.”

It still was another hour before Chanyeol arrived at the hospital, though. Baekhyun usually tried to avoid the ICU like the plague, but that’s where Chanyeol was. The second he walks through the doors, and aura of complete pain and suffering hits him like bullet. It almost physically hurts him to think about Chanyeol stuck in this ward.

Chanyeol is towards the end of the hall, and luckily in his own room. The curtains are drawn, leaving the room rather dark aside from one lamp left glowing in the corner. The heart monitor beeps at a steady pace, and for a split second when Baekhyun looks at the bed, he swears he sees someone else in it. Someone shorter with darker hair and more angular features, but he blinks and it’s definitely Chanyeol there. His hair is still slightly damp and sticking to his forehead. Creases have formed between his brows as he sleeps, clearly not peacefully. His breaths are labored even though he’s wearing an oxygen mask. Baekhyun can’t stand to see him this way.

He picks up a chair from the corner by the lamp and gently places it next to the bed. Chanyeol’s hand is cold when he holds it between his own two, resting his forehead against the intertwined mess. There’s a desperate feeling inside of him as he prays to everything almighty that no one comes looking for him in here.

“I can’t do this again,” he whispers to the quiet room. A small sob leaves his mouth as he whispers the same phrase over and over again. For the first time since Kyungsoo died two years ago, he lets himself cry. _I can’t do this again._  

Baekhyun falls asleep watching the IV drip, drip, drip…

Sehun eventually comes by, but when he sees Baekhyun peacefully asleep for once and hands firmly holding Chanyeol’s, he decides he’ll let Junmyeon handle Baekhyun’s patients. Just for today, at least.

Three days pass and Chanyeol is allowed to leave his room. Baekhyun pushes him outside in a wheelchair.

“I feel stupid,” Chanyeol chuckles. “Why can’t I try to walk?”

Baekhyun continues pushing him through the courtyard. It’s chilly so not many people are out. They stop for a short moment so that Baekhyun can wrap a blanket around Chanyeol. “You need rest to get better. Walking will make you overexert yourself and you’ll just get sicker.”

“I can at least wrap the blanket around myself,” he whines.

“I’m your doctor, Chan, why won’t you let me take care of you?”

“Exactly. You’re my doctor, not my mother.”

Baekhyun only sighs, pushing Chanyeol up to a bench and then helping him stand only to sit back down again.

They sit together on the bench in silence, just enjoying the changing leaves and the breeze. Chanyeol scoots closer so he can wrap the blanket around Baekhyun’s shoulders too once he sees him shiver a bit.

“You’re being weird,” Chanyeol says. “Ever since I got sick, you’ve been weird. I miss when you’d joke with me. Now you’re always serious.”

Baekhyun frowns, “I can’t help it. I’m an oncologist. You’re supposed to be getting better, but here you are worse than ever and we can’t even continue your treatment because you’re currently too weak. I feel like I’m doing everything wrong.”

Even though Baekhyun is hurting, Chanyeol smiles. “Look at me, Baekhyun.”

He does.

“I’m gonna get better. You promised me from the beginning that I would, and I trust you. I know you’re going to help me.”

It’s supposed to make Baekhyun feel better, but instead he only feels like the weight on his shoulders has increased tenfold. He smiles back, though, even managing to make it look real. Chanyeol gives him a reassuring squeeze before Baekhyun rests his head against his shoulder, thankful that Chanyeol cannot see the many looks of doubt that flicker across Baekhyun’s eyes.

They stay outside for a while longer. Chanyeol asks Baekhyun about other patients. Baekhyun doesn’t have much to say because he can’t, so Chanyeol talks instead. He tells Baekhyun about his love for music and about the instruments he plays, Baekhyun interjecting at one point to throw in a sarcastic _I love how you’re so humble about this._

They go back once it starts to grow dark outside and the lights come on. Baekhyun lets Chanyeol ditch the wheelchair once inside and keeps a firm arm around his waist as they slowly trek the last twenty feet to Chanyeol’s room.

Chanyeol’s allowed to go home after another week. Baekhyun gives him his personal cell number and tells him, “Text me if you want anything, but call me if _need anything._ ”

He gets a flirtatious, “Oh, I’ll be calling you real soon.”

That’s how Baekhyun knows for certain that Chanyeol is okay again, even if the latest tests did show that the cancer had spread to his blood marrow.

He gets a call that Sunday from Chanyeol and calls out of work sick. He’s going to have double the appointments the next day, but Chanyeol sounded desperate when he called. It wasn’t worth it to risk not seeing him.

He arrives at Chanyeol’s apartment less than half an hour later, hair a mess and still in sweatpants and a loose-fitting tee shirt. Chanyeol opens the door with an excited, “You came!” Baekhyun stands in the doorway, panicked and confused.

“You’re not hurt? There’s no emergency?”

“The only emergency is your hair right now, Baek,” Chanyeol taunts. He reaches his hand out and runs it through the pouty Baekhyun’s bedhead. “I’ve never seen you look like this. It’s a nice change. You look so young.”

“Are you saying that I normally look old?” Baekhyun gripes, punching Chanyeol directly in the chest, both for calling him old and for scaring him.

Chanyeol whines and holds his chest. “That was mean! I have cancer there!”

With a roll of his eyes, Baekhyun pushes passed Chanyeol and invites himself in.

Chanyeol’s apartment is very… Chanyeol. It’s not dirty per say, but there is sheet music on nearly every flat surface. In the living room alone there are two guitars and a piano, which when Baekhyun brings it up, Chanyeol only confesses that there are probably a couple instruments in every room. He has cleared off the couch and coffee table, though, replacing sheet music with takeout.

“This was your emergency?”

“I ordered too much.”

“I called out of work and rescheduled all my appointments today for shitty takeout?” Baekhyun is irritated, but his words lack all bite.

Chanyeol scratches his head, smiling sheepishly. “I thought you might need a day off,” he murmured.

Baekhyun can’t help but soften his expression and sit down beside Chanyeol, maybe too close for two people who are supposed to be doctor and patient. Chanyeol doesn’t complain, though. He only hands Baekhyun some wooden chopsticks and a plate, telling him _let’s eat!_

They go through so much food that both of them are left leaning back on the couch groaning and griping over and over again about how stuffed they are as some horror movie plays in the background. Chanyeol cringes at the gore, while Baekhyun only laughs because _you should have seen some of the surgeries I shadowed during my residency._ Chanyeol nearly throws up at the stories.

At around three in the afternoon, Baekhyun gets up from resting his head in Chanyeol’s lap and grabs the nearest guitar. He places it in Chanyeol’s grasp. “Play me something,” he instructs.

“Why?” Chanyeol laughs.

“You’re some kind of musical genius, aren’t you?” Baekhyun challenges. “Or are you actually just a fluke and this is all for show?”

Rolling his eyes, Chanyeol stands up and sets the guitar back where it was before going into another room. He returns with a different guitar, this one acoustic.

“What do you want to hear?”

“Whatever you want.”

Chanyeol thinks for a minute before he starts to play, and right from the first note Baekhyun is immersed. Chanyeol plays with his fingers instead of a pick, plucking the strings with dexterity.

“Oh, I know this song!” Baekhyun exclaims about a minute in, bouncing on the couch.

Chanyeol smiles softly at him, closing his eyes as he plays. “You should sing it, then.”

So Baekhyun does.

Chanyeol clearly wasn’t expecting him to actually start singing, because his fingers fumble over the notes for a second, but then he grins and plays even better than before. Baekhyun smiles back as he sings, but quickly starts laughing and stops.

“Aw, why’d you quit singing? It was good!” Chanyeol asks, fingers coming to rest too.

“I forget the rest of the words!”

They both just laugh, grinning until Chanyeol’s subsides into something much softer. He looks at Baekhyun with such adoration that the latter boy feels shy.

“What is it,” Baekhyun asks.

Chanyeol shakes his head, “Sometimes I forget you’re my doctor and not my boyfriend or something.”

Baekhyun freezes, not sure if he heard Chanyeol right. He wants to deny it, but here he is sharing takeout over horror films and laying in his lap and playing music with him. Hell, he even called out sick to be here today with Chanyeol.

Chanyeol is about to apologize, he can feel it, when he speaks up. “Why can’t I be both?”

There’s a brief moment, as if someone hit the pause button on them, before Chanyeol leans across the couch and kisses Baekhyun on the lips. Baekhyun smiles into it, wrapping his arms around Chanyeol’s neck and laying back, pulling the other boy with him.

* * *

 

_Winter_

When Baekhyun breaks the news to Chanyeol that his cancer has progressed to stage IV, Chanyeol doesn’t even bat an eye when he decides immediately that he wants to discontinue his treatments. He says that he’ll stay on pain medication, but he doesn’t want anything else to ruin the last few weeks of his life.

“You say this like you’re sure you’re going to die,” Baekhyun reasons. “Don’t give up. Please don’t.”

“It’s essentially terminal at this stage, right?”

“Not always!”

“Baek, you’re an oncologist. Tell me honestly, from a doctor’s point of view, that there’s even a twenty percent chance that I will make it out of this alive,” Chanyeol argues, grabbing Baekhyun’s hands and forcing him to look him in the eye.

Baekhyun stares at him and he opens his mouth to speak, but he can’t do it. He can’t tell him that.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers instead. “I’m so sorry.”

Chanyeol pulls him into a hug.

“I can’t keep my promise.”

“It’s okay,” Chanyeol assures him, even though he’s absolutely terrified. He wishes Baekhyun were the one holding him in this instance, not the other way around. He wishes he could cry. He wishes he could stay, because now he definitely has a reason to.

Chanyeol really does go through with stopping his treatments, only taking pain killers from then on. It doesn’t take long for his condition to decline, seeing as, even though it never really made the amount of cancer cells decline, the radiation kept the cancer cells from multiplying too quickly. Baekhyun calls for his hospitalization, even though Chanyeol really doesn’t want it. He knows he’s being selfish, but he can’t bear the thought of Chanyeol being alone somewhere and something happening.

Chanyeol loses weight rapidly because he refuses to eat. He’s not trying to be stubborn, but he just never feels hungry. He does feel like he’ll be sick if the nurses try to make him eat, though. He has a hard time standing on his own without his legs trying to collapse underneath him, so Baekhyun has to go back to pushing Chanyeol around in a wheelchair. Chanyeol grumbles about it any time they go anywhere.

When it gets to the point where Chanyeol is more often feverish than not, Baekhyun hands him his cell phone. “What am I supposed to do with this?” Chanyeol asks.

Baekhyun pauses and looks away, trying to figure out how to word what he wants to say. “I think it’s about time you called your family.”

Chanyeol just sets his phone down on the bedside table. As soon as Baekhyun leaves to do his rounds for the day, Chanyeol cries. Baekhyun can hear him from his place outside the door, though.

The next day Baekhyun visits the advisory council. He asks to use his vacation time that he’s literally never used in the last five years he has spent at this hospital to take the next few weeks off, but they tell him he can’t. So, Baekhyun quits instead.

Word of his departure spreads fast and as he walks through the oncology ward’s lobby later that afternoon to collect his things from his office, all eyes are on him. Sehun corners him when he gets to his office and is grabbing what few things he has in there.

“Are you really doing this because of Chanyeol?” He asks, voice loud and demanding. It’s obvious that he can’t believe Baekhyun would do something like that, that he believes Baekhyun is being stupid.

Baekhyun grips the edge of his desk until his knuckles are white and his shoulders are shaking. His lip trembles, half from anger and half from trying to hold back tears. Sehun just stands there, waiting for an answer that he should already know.

“Please get out,” Baekhyun tells him, as politely as he can manage.

“You’re giving up your job that you went to school for so long for, and you get paid great for, over Kyungsoo version two?”

Baekhyun slams a hand on his desk. “What good is this job if I can’t even save one person?!”

Sehun stands speechless in the doorway.

“What good is it, Sehun? What good am I?” Baekhyun is crying at this point, entire body shaking. “I can’t save anyone.”

Sehun leaves without a word and Baekhyun only continues grabbing his things, hiccups and sobs leaving his mouth at an alarming rate. He drops everything on the floor and sits on the couch, pulling his knees to his chest as he tries to calm down.

That night, Baekhyun goes home and packs a duffle bag of clothes and toiletries. He returns to the hospital pretty late but Chanyeol is still awake.

“What are you doing here? You should go home and rest,” Chanyeol says, voice laced with concern.

Baekhyun smiles gently, wiping Chanyeol’s hair away from his forehead and kissing it. “Don’t worry about me, Chan. I’ll be okay, I promise.”

“Sehun said you quit,” he whispers as Baekhyun slides into the bed next to him, even though it’s much too small for two people. “Why would you do that?”

“I want to spend what time we have left actually together,” Baekhyun admits. He laces his fingers between Chanyeol’s, ignoring the fact that his hands are incredibly clammy. “They wouldn’t let me take a vacation, so I quit instead.”

Shaking his head, Chanyeol sighs. “You’re such an idiot.”

“I know.”

There’s a long moment of quiet where Chanyeol just rests, keeping his eyes closed. Baekhyun hates that he notices how labored Chanyeol’s breathing has become in the past couple of weeks. He watches Chanyeol start to fall asleep, and the tranquility of it makes it easy for him to admit something he never thought he’d say.

“I love you, Chanyeol,” he whispers.

The moment is quiet enough that it almost seems like Chanyeol had fallen asleep and not heard, but his eyes flutter open and he smiles very gently at Baekhyun, a smile that’s just so very Chanyeol. “I love you too,” he replies back.

Baekhyun uses his free hand to smooth his thumb over Chanyeol’s face. “Get some sleep,” he says. Baekhyun gives him a kiss for the night before they both head off to sleep. It’s the first full night of sleep that Baekhyun gets in about five years.

* * *

 

_Spring_

Chanyeol only lives for less than twenty-three more days after the night Baekhyun moved into the hospital with him. He died while sleeping, not in pain or suffering at all, but only because he was on such high dosage pain medications. Baekhyun was with him every step of the way.

He was there fifteen days before when Chanyeol told him that he wanted Baekhyun to keep the guitar that he played for him on that night in November.

He was there nine days before when he confessed that he actually had no idea where his family was or what their phone numbers were because he ran away when he was sixteen.

He was there four days before when Chanyeol broke down after so long of holding himself together and desperately begged the stars to let him stay on Earth for just a little while longer.

He was there the night of when Chanyeol held his hand very weakly and told Baekhyun not to worry because he was ready and it would be okay.

Baekhyun was most definitely not okay.

He made sure to tell Chanyeol how much he loved him every chance he got. He wanted it to be the last thing that Chanyeol heard. He needed him to know.

Chanyeol’s heartrate monitor flat lined at 7:39pm that night.

Baekhyun, Sehun, and Junmyeon were the only ones who attended his funeral three days later. Sehun and Junmyeon awkwardly sat on either side of him as he tried his very best not to cry.

 Three weeks later and Baekhyun sits in a coffee shop, nursing his third cup of coffee in the last hour because he hasn’t slept in at least thirty-six. He’s so, _so_ tired. Coffee can do wonders for waking up your body, but it doesn’t do much to liven up emotional exhaustion. It’s hard not to feel that exhaustion as someone who literally had to watch the person he loved slowly die before his eyes.

Next to him, Chanyeol’s guitar rests against the table in its case. He smiles softly at it and places a hand on the hard plastic of the case, like touching it somehow brings him closer to Chanyeol. When he closes his eyes, he can still remember the way Chanyeol played. He can remember Chanyeol’s sparkly eyes and bright smile. He can remember the way his voice sounded so sincere every time he said _I love you, Baekhyun._  

Throwing away his coffee with still about a third left in the cup, he picks up the guitar and heads out of the coffee shop. Baekhyun knows now that he can’t be a superhero and that he can’t save everyone, but as he heads back home from the café and the hospital where he managed to persuade the advisory board for his job back, he’d like to think that Chanyeol is proud of him anyways.


End file.
